


Polychromatic Cognisance

by Everlind



Series: Jockat AU [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: High School AU, Humanstuck, M/M, and stringbean John with a skateboard, featuring a buff football playing Karkat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 21:45:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5944156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlind/pseuds/Everlind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dave.”</p><p>“Karkat.”</p><p>“How did my life come to this?”</p><p>“When you grew out of smol angry gnome and advanced right into strangely attractive emo orc, not to mention captain of the varsity team. Beauty is pain, man.” </p><p> </p><p>Alternatively: the one with Karkat and the kissing booth. Unsurprisingly, kissing ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Polychromatic Cognisance

It started with Nepeta waving a pamphlet under your nose for the school’s fundraising carnival. It somehow ended with a god blasted kissing booth. A god blasted kissing booth with you in it.

You don’t remember, exactly, what happened for shit to get so thoroughly stirred into this fuckery, but goddamn if your life isn’t the saggiest sphincter dribbling a sad, pungent trail of bad choices all around.

Dave holds a tube under your nose. Or rather, he sort of flourishes it in your face and nearly lodges it up your left nostril. “Chapstick,” he says. “You’re going to need it.”

You make a face at it. “If that is the same stick of erect vaseline I’ve seen you slather all over your cock pocket then thanks, but no thanks. I’ve seen you deep throat that thing with abandon.”

“Not the time to worry about second hand kisses here, casanova,” he uses the chapstick to gesture at a crowd of people, predominantly female, crowded behind the red rope and brandishing freshly purchased tickets in your general direction. “These ladies are buying hard sugar and you’re a shapely hunk of rock candy, so pucker up those bad boys and get dealin’.”

“Dave.”

“Karkat.”

“How did my life come to this?”

“When you grew out of smol angry gnome and advanced right into strangely attractive emo orc, not to mention captain of the varsity team. Beauty is pain, man.” 

“…is that Eridan?”

Dave pats your shoulder. “Beauty is pain.”

It’s for charity, you tell yourself. You know what? Fuck that. _Fuck_ charity, actually, fuck it in the ass with a pineapple. Two pinapples. Five pineapples aligned and injected at high speed with cosmic predestination. No, you know what, fuck Nepeta. Officially worst sister ever. You are buying her a statuette of a burgeoning middle finger for her birthday, right after you disown her and burn all the shipping charts. Preying upon the benevolent side of your conscience like that.

What kind of person pimps out their _siblings_? Nepeta Leijon, that’s who. Evil evil evil.

This is terrible. People put their mouth on yours over and over and over again, and it’s not even slightly romantic even once. The movies lied to you.

The girls smile, they’re cute, but then they kiss you and it’s a big shitstorm of NO roaring between your ears, and you can’t even say exactly that, not really, cause you’ll trample over feelings and you promised Nepeta, officially the evil stepsister. Your eyes glaze over, your soul slowly oozes through the cracks in your heart and there is Dave motherfucking Strider, giving you a thumbs up from the edge of your periphery. So you let them do it, and it doesn’t feel like much, all those mouths, just pieces of body mashing against yours.

It’s _boring_. Also slightly sticky.

It’s supposed to be barely half an hour, but it feels like a lifetime. To the point you’re happy to see a familiar face. “Hi,” Eridan says with a sideways little shrug. “For charity, of course,” he says. His face is hot pink. There’s scandalised muttering in the background, but you’re kind of impressed with the sheer balls this must’ve taken.

And he’s nice about it, there-and-gone, fingers touching your sleeve lightly before pulling back. That rueful little shrug again, up-and-down, which is when, over his shoulder, you see Damara Megido, shoving girls aside like they’re bowling pins, advancing like a woman on a mission.

You grab Eridan by his ridiculous scarf. “Don’t you _dare_ leave me,” you snarl at him.

“Uhm,” Eridan says.

“Out of way,” Damara commands, sweeping him aside. Eridan disappears from view with a sad little cry.

“Help,” you squeak, entirely valiant mancreature you obviously are, hands scrabbling along the surface of the table as if hoping there somehow appeared a magic eject button that’ll catapult you to the other side of the universe.

Damara pauses to apply a new coating of red, red lipstick. “Yes. Cry. I enjoy when they cry.”

“DAAA _AAAVE_ ,” you shriek.

And that’s when John Egbert somehow falls into the booth.

From above.

He crashes right through the papier-mâché awning and hits the table grubby sneakers first, overbalances, and all but goes butt-first over the edge and into your lap. The chair tips back and you make a desperate grab for the table before he breaks both your necks. John’s ass is all bones and his hair smells like a hot glue gun. You can see approximately jackshit. “THERE YOU ARE,” he says to Damara. “I was looking all over for you. Boy, am I happy to see you.”

“I feel not same,” Damara says, stony.

“Aw, but I got you…” -he pauses dramatically; you wish he would _get off_ (you fucking don’t), and then he zips open his hoodie and spreads it wide (what? _what_? is he _flashing_ her? what?)- “the goods,” he finishes, voice low. You can’t see anything but you can simply _tell_ there’s an eyebrow dance involved.

“Damn son,” Dave says, standing _right fucking there_ and uncaring of your predicament, the traitor. “Where’d you get that?”

John flails a little. He’s still in your lap, butt bruising your thighs and long legs hooked over the table. His hair is in your mouth and it could use a fucking wash. “I have my sources.”

“Not enough,” Damara sneers. “I only want big. No deal, get away.”

“Wait!” John pleads, holding up his hands as if to physically ward her off. Your knight in armor. If ratty sneakers and scummy jeans can be called such.

“Yes, please wait, I agree completely with Egbert for once,” you mutter into his hair.

John jackknifes out of your lap and lands on the table like a monkey with a firecracker up its ass. “I’m sure we can come to an agreement,” John says.

Of course. At the price of his soul. Or his penis.

Instead of biting off John’s head and spitting it out, Damara looks thoughtful. You never understood how John and Damara worked, if you can call the limping train wreck of their interactions even that. They bonded in detention, you’re pretty sure, but you hate to think which aspects of their respective personalities… and anatomy… were necessary to make such an unholy alliance happen.

“Maybe,” Damara says after a while. “I give you ticket, is yours, so you kiss him.”

John laughs. You kind of want to punch him off the table. Maybe he’ll land between Damara’s tits and suffocate to death. “Dude, Damara, please. He’s a guy. I’m a guy. It doesn’t work like that.”

“You have big wide face hole, yes? He has big wide face hole, too. Rub them together with tongues out. Is same.”

Nobody has ever managed to make a kiss sound less appetising. You put your head on the table and wish for someone to bring down an axe on the back of your neck.

“She’s got a point bro,” Dave tells John, because he’s awful and he knows you think John weirdly attractive even on his scruffier, shiftier days. Which, yeah, okay, basically _every_ day, fuck, the little shit was born scruffy and shifty, you have gone mad, it’s a lost cause and you have no self respect and he has a _really_ cute smile okay? You hate that he does, you hate you just can’t be a walking stereotype and date the head cheerleader ( _still_ be dating the head cheerleader actually), but here you are, disappointed despite knowing better, because John’s also notoriously awful, like a punch to the gut on his good days.

Seems like today he’s having an absolutely fucking _stellar_ day, because he’s looking at Dave like an arm just erupted out of the latter’s ass and bopped him on the nose. Boys kissing boys with their mouth, gee willikers batman, it’s too much for his peanut of a brain to comprehend. Whatever, you’re done.

“For fuck’s sake, John, you raving imbecile, get lost. Damara, come here. That gum in your mouth better not be in mine when this is over with.” Not that a piece of gum is the worst to worry about, here.

“No promises,” Damara purrs.

“Wait,” John says. He swallows. Nods, then sits down on the table and spins like a top until his boney legs dangle at each side of you. “I can do it,” he tells you, nodding. He’s about as red as a tomato. “I’m ready,” he puckers his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut like he’s expecting something to explode.

He looks absolutely ridiculous.

Grubby and kind of dusty, with his hair like a bird’s nest and an odd streak of glitter on the edge of his jaw. His clothes are all too big or too small and his socks are a mismatch and his lashes are so very dark against his cheekbones. Always getting into trouble and accidentally stepping all over your feelings and wearing his beanie over his helmet when he’s skating like a total dork.

You don’t understand why you like him so much.

It’s not much of a kiss. You avoid his mouth, most of it, going for the corner instead, the little soft dip right before it comes his cheek.

Out of them all he’s the only person you kiss first.

Your cheeks brush, John’s breathing hitches, and you just kind of touch him with your lips against his overheated skin. It’s chaste and tiny and his overgrown fringe tickles the corner of your eye and he sort of twitches, a soft startled nudge _closer_ with a little sound that you can feel more than you can hear -not turning his head towards you and not leaning in, no, but somehow closer all the same.

Your heart feels like a bomb about to burst and John’s eyes are wide when you pull away, all fey curiosity. You fail to break eye contact and he smiles wider, head ducking down while his hand comes up to touch where your lips were, a question in the curl of his fingers as he cups the sensation.

“You kiss like babies,” Damara sighs, hauling John off the table by the scruff of his hoodie like a naughty kitten. She shakes him until a box of XXXL Special Edition Pocky tumbles out of his hoodie and into her hand. She only wants big, indeed. John’s cast aside like an empty wrapper, landing on the ground with an _oomph!_ as she stalks off, skirt swinging.

“Uh,” John says, and then something _does_ explode and he makes a face like _whoops_ , guilty. “Shit, that’s my cue! Gotta scram!”

Popcorn (popcorn! how? where? _why_?) starts raining down as you watch him go. People raise their hands to the sky, incredulous. Somewhere a child cries, overcome -that, or Gamzee. Probably Gamzee.

Dave tactfully informs you your shift has been over for at least ten minutes, and what about that, time flies when you’re having fun, don’t it? Look, there’s Tavros to relieve you. Looking very sad about it, because Vriska has bought (bribed, threatened, stolen, blackmailed, forged) the remaining tickets, so you have to stay put to do damage control before she eats Tavros and lays her eggs in him.

At the end of the day you smell like salty butter and there’s a dusting of glitter under the curve of your bottom lip.

John Egbert was here.

You don’t wash it off.

It’s stupid, it’s sentimental, it was barely kiss and yes he smiled but John smiles a lot and he also rigged the popcorn machines and made the bouncy castle make whoopee cushion noises and you saw him get a month’s worth of detention on top of the other five, and he’s a walking disaster, really.  


Yeah. You totally have a crush on the school prankster.

  


Shit.

  



End file.
